Self-portrait with the painting "Bathers with a Red Cow"

Émile Bernard's Self-portrait with the Painting 'Bathers with a Red Cow' (1889) is a remarkable double document of the Pont-Aven group at a pivotal moment. Bernard painted it in the year he and Paul Gauguin were in intensive creative dialogue at Pont-Aven, developing the Synthetist style — flat areas of color bounded by dark contours, inspired by Japanese prints and medieval stained glass — that marked a turning point in Post-Impressionist painting. By showing himself alongside his own work, Bernard asserts his authorship of innovations that Gauguin would later claim as his own, a dispute that defined the relationship between the two artists for decades. The work is at the Musée d'Orsay.

The self-portrait demonstrates Synthetist principles: simplified outlines, flattened forms, and a reduced palette that abandons Impressionist atmospheric modeling in favor of expressive color zones. The juxtaposition of the artist and the painting behind him is itself a compositional statement about authorship and artistic identity.